


The Club of the Damned

by Sparcina



Category: Doctor Who (2005), Hannibal (TV), Sherlock (TV), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: A lot of people need a hug, Apologies, Explosive reunion, F/M, Hannibal AU Season 3, Kisses, M/M, Mature stuff in chapter 5, Puns are intended, Retaliation, Rose Tyler as a waitress, Sherlock AU Season 3, Some other people need a slap, Sort of multiverse Café AU, Two doctors is one too many (at least where Hannibal is concerned)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-10
Updated: 2016-10-02
Packaged: 2018-03-22 05:05:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3716209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sparcina/pseuds/Sparcina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John Watson and Will Graham meet every Monday at Café Bad Wolf. Both destroyed by the loss and treason of their better half, they struggle to go on, but they are not alone in their fight: what about this strange blond girl wearing a key, a Rose who looks distraught enough to be part of their mourning club? Or that man, Steve, who claims to be a captain without a ship? Meanwhile, the Tenth Doctor takes on board the TARDIS another doctor, a detective and a genius playboy.<br/>*** Crossover Hannibal x Doctor Who x Sherlock x Avengers in a Café AU! ***</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Support, Secrets, and Surprises

Every Monday, they met at café  _Bad Wolf_.

The time slot fit perfectly in John Watson's busy schedule. As a doctor in London, he had more than enough patients, and he usually spent his weekends juggling with overtime and insomnia. Some bad tongues would have said he didn't have a life, but then they would have to put Greg Lestrade and Mycroft Holmes in the same basket, and Londoners tried not to alienate the head of the New Scotland Yard and the puppeteer of the Ministry. Ever since the death of Sherlock Holmes, the most famous detective of all time, the two men worked even more than usual, more akin to robots than human beings.

But that was nothing compared to John.

"A coffee, please. No cream, no sugar."

He wanted the beverage to hit him as the benevolent slap that would wake him up from the nightmare of his life. The new waitress, a blond girl with beautiful but haunted eyes, nodded and went back to the counter with the enthusiasm of a convicted on the day of his hanging. John would have felt sorry for her if he hadn't been so busy breathing past the black hole carved in his heart by the death of the man he had loved. It was a pity that he had been too much a coward to actually tell him how he felt. And now he felt like dying. If he hadn't been a doctor, and if saving lives hadn't been a purpose stronger than the Reaper itself, he would have seriously considered taking his own life. 

"Aren't you going to drink something, Will?"

On the other side of the table sat Will Graham, former FBI profiler and multiple dog owner. He looked particularly worn-out today, the bags under his eyes so dark he looked like someone had hit him in the face at least twice. No doubt he would have liked the bruises over the lack of sleep. They made a nice pair, the both of them. It was probably what had brought them together in the first place, because John wasn't so talkative these days, and Will was avoding human company as a general habit.

"I really need to sleep," Will mumbled, confirming John's suspicion. "A glass of water, please."

"You look like you could use something stronger."

The blond waitress placed the cup of steaming coffee in front of John and arched an eyebrow at Will. Although she tried for a cheerful expression, her smile didn't quite reach her eyes. Will gave the hint of one, as empty and bleak as the waitress', and considered her not-so-stupid offer.

"Do you have whisky?" When the waitress nodded, he  added: "You know what? Bring me the bottle. Please."

Two minutes later, Will was nursing a glass of whisky, the bottle firmly set on the table between them. He fixed the golden liquid, thinking how much similar it was to his brain. Floating. Not going anywhere until it shriveled out and died. In a way, whisky also reminded him of a pair of beautiful eyes, of the man behind them, a man he still worshipped, even after all that had transpired.

"So, how was your week, Will?" John shot him a concerned glance over his cup of coffee. It was already empty, Will noticed. His friend John tended to drink and eat fast, no matter how hot, as if he didn't have two minutes to spare in his days full of consultations, examinations, seminars and depressive considerations. He would have made the perfect doctor, devoted to his patients and the evolution of the profession that he was, if he hadn't been so near the breaking point. 

And Will knew a couple of things about collapsing to pieces.

"Oh, nothing out of the ordinary. Spoke to Alana on the phone. Walked the dogs. Tried to imagine myself giving classes at the Academy again. But that was just wishful thinking."

If John was acting like a man on his last hour, Will resembled one cursed for eternal life: he ate slowly, drank slower, and went from point A to point B without hurry, as if he hoped to calm down the crazily speedy swirling of his thoughts by opposing them a calm and steady reality. Of course, he felt anything except steady, proof being the amount of alcohol he planned on drinking tonight. The drunker the merrier. His dogs wouldn't mind.

"You can talk to me, you know."

John laid a hand on his, squeezing it gently. The kindness in his eyes inflamed the pain in Will's chest. How could such a nice man, a broken and busy man, find the time to take care of another mentally-impaired being? Well, he knew—his empathy knew, at least. It still didn't make sense, but that might be because he was so used to dwell in the corrupted minds of killers, rappers, and cannibals. He had very own personal Reaper to thank for that. 

No. Better not to indulge in that train of thought yet again. He brought the bottle to his lips and took a cold sip. Fuck, he needed to stop thinking. It was the only way to stop hurting, if only for a little, magnanimous while. 

"I'm still having nightmares, if that is what you're asking. That is, when I manage to sleep."

"Which nightmares?"

A sad smile curled up Will's lips. Of course John would ask the question. The doctor knew him so well it frightened him sometimes.

"The ones about him."

The last word was said with so much intensity, born of such longing and hate, that John shivered. He could rely to those feelings.

"Tell me about them."

Will laid down the bottle. Two tables away, he saw the blond waitress cleaning vigorously a table full of bread crumbs.

She was chatting at the same time with a handsome man of about thirty five, tall, muscled, every feature in his face chiseled to fit a magazine's front page. His dark brown hair was artfully arranged over his brow in sweet messy points, as if to draw people's eyes closer to his face. It was certainly working: ninety percent of the patrons, give or take five, were either looking directly at him or stealing coveting glances.

The blond waitress, curiously, looked immune to his charm—or was it indifference? The pain in her eyes felt familiar. She was a survivor too.

"Will?"

John waved a hand in the air between them.

"Sorry," Will mumbled, turning his attention back to him. "Distracted."

"Yeah, I've noticed."

Will tried to swallow past the lump in his throat.

"It's not what you're thinking."

"And what am I am thinking?"

John's fingers were drumming on the table. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. One-two-three-four. Fast and unrelenting, like a deep-ingrained beat, an unconscious melody of times gone by and spaces unknown. Out of reach and, still, there and tangible. He did his best to ignore the familiar melody of a violin his traitorous brain conjured.

"You think I find the girl interesting."

John stilled, smiled awkwardly, then went on drumming.

"I do think you find her interesting, but not because of her physical's charms. I find her pretty too," he admitted shamelessly, "but what got my attention is the haunted look in her eyes. It feels..."

"Familiar."

John nodded gravely. "Yes. I wonder who she had lost."

"It looks like whoever that person was, she might not have to mourn him too long."

"You really think that?"

The blond girl turned towards him, as if sensing his scrutinizing. His empathy wretched a pained moan out of his throat.

"Will," John murmured, leaning over the table and holding his hand tighter. "What is it?"

How could he have believed one instant she was on the recovery road? In his heart, a bleeding wound hovered over his own, every inch as deep and tormenting as the emptiness left by the departure of Hannibal. 

"It's her," he gasped, closing his free hand around his glass of whisky. "Her pain."

"Let it go, Will." He said that every time. "Focus. You can do this."

Will squeezed his eyes shut and forced the outside feelings to part with his nightmares. The excruciating pain decreased to a more bearable level: a knife in the chest to a bullet in the leg. 

"Those nightmares," he said in a hushed tone. "They are always the same."

John looked intently at him, gifting his friend with his undivided attention. Will tried to block out his awareness of the waitress, who was still peering at him from behind the counter, where she was now busy preparing a sandwich.

"He says he can help me." The words rushed forward. "He says he understands me and wants me to get better but all that time he is just feeding me with lies and nurturing my illness until the point I break and then... then..."

John knew the whole story already, but Will went on. He needed to put it into words, to tilt out of balance the monster clenched around his mind.

"Then I'm falsely accused of murders, sent to jail, and when I manage to get out and discover who he really is..." He trailed off, overwhelming by a pang of guilt.

Oh, yes, he did know who Hannibal Lecter was. He knew it, he logically rebelled against everything this man stood for, but his heart told another story entirely—a horror tale that gave him the impression of being thrown in a lava pit and then wrung dry of his soul. He gasped in pain. Time didn't heal anything. It just make him more desperate. 

"I don't know how I can..."

"Love him?"

There was the sound of broken glass. Pain shot through Will's hand.

"Will!"

John swore under his breath and cradled his hand in his. It was only when he began to pick out shards of glass that Will noticed the blood oozing from his palm. Had he really managed to break a glass? He gazed at the whisky meandering in golden rivulets down his wrist, tendrils of stopped time to his dazzled self.

"Now, now, mister, please let me attend to him."

It was the blond waitress. She placed a first aid kit on the table and crouched to examine Will's hand.

"I'm a doctor," John protested, choosing a wet cloth and professionally disinfecting Will's hand.

The blond waitress snorted, and began to gather the broken pieces of glass.

"I'm sure you are," she said in a furious tone, and then turning to Will: "Will you be all right, mister?"

Will nodded, as if the hand didn't belong to him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the handsome man approaching.

"May I be of service? he asked, smiling broadly.

The waitress turned to him and dropped off the transparent pieces in one of his big hand.

"Yep, Jack. Wouldn't want you to feel left aside, y'know?"

John glanced from the man called Jack to Will to the blond girl. How came they were all so calm, almost cheerful? Even his friend Will looked unconcerned. Maybe that was what it meant to hang out with special people.

The waitress leaned forward, double-checking his job of bandaging Will's hand. Really, as if he didn't do that on a daily basis! He had said he was a doctor, but then again, people might use that as an excuse all the time, or as a name, for all he knew.

A key sprung from its warm place between the waitress' breasts. It dangled at the hand of a silver chain, looking old and simple—not at all the type of jewelry he would have expected a girl with her looks to wear. A testament to the secrets in her eyes?

Will too had noticed the key. He freed his unhurt hand out from under John's and reached for the key, drawing the remaining three pairs of eyes to it, two of which solidified with a proud anger.

"Oi, what do you think you're doing?"

The girl snatched the key back from his fingers. Will opened his mouth and closed it again, looking distraught, sorry, and curious all at the same time, which was no easy accomplishment.

"I'm sorry," he said, averting his eyes. "I didn't mean to... it was... There was something about it, I don't know what, and it's no excuse, but-"

The man called Jack looped an arm around the waitress' waist and shot Will a disbelieved look. A similar expression crossed the waitress' face.

"What d'you mean?"

Will looked pointedly at his wounded hand. Blood had begun to seep through the bandage.

"I can't explain it," he mumbled. "It just... feels strange."

Jack whispered something in the blond girl's ear. She nodded, licking her lower lip in thoughtful contemplation, and sat down on the chair Jack presented her.

"You do remember how to make grilled sandwiches, don't ya?" she asked, concerned. "And espressos?"

The grin on Jack's face would have outdone a shark's.

"Don't you remember I worked in this kind of place on Satellite 5? You sassy beauty."

"Well, that might be a bit far in your memories, Captain."

"I assure you it's not."

"Off with you."

"Yes, m'dam!"

He kissed her on the head and hurried to the counter, where a couple was waiting to pay. The waitress put the remaining shards of Will's glass and John's cup together in front of her and looked at the two strangers, her features turned into a wonder of another world.

Or would that be another universe?

"My name's Rose Tyler. Who are you and what are you doing on Earth?"

 


	2. Disappeared, Dead, and Distant

Will and John exchanged a glance. That was certainly an interesting way to start a conversation. The hunger and sadness they might have felt was replaced by incredulity, and an appreciable dose of curiosity. John broke the silence.

"I'm John Watson," he introduced himself, putting up his best blank face. "And saving lives, I guess."

Rose arched a delicate eyebrow, playing with the big silver earring on her left ear. John's expression changed to match hers.

"You asked me what I was doing on Earth, no? I'm saving lives, I'm a doctor."

A searing pain crossed Rose's face. Will clutched a hand to his chest, experiencing the tug in his own ribcage. Rose shot him a worried glance.

"Are you ok? Is it your hand?"

She made a gesture to grab it, but Will moved it to his lap. He talked without looking up, which was a habit that needed some getting used to.

"No, my hand's fine," Will replied in a strained voice. "It's your... pain."

"My pain?" Rose exclaimed, surprised.

"I can... feel it, if that makes any sense."

Rose's voice was soft and accepting when she spoke.

"Yes, it does." A tight smile graced her lips. "What's your name?"

"Will. Will Graham."

John turned his attention to that tall and handsome guy behind the counter. Jack, the professional barista.

It certainly didn't look like it: he was currently placing a portafilter on the espresso machine  with an enthusiasm bordering on madness. A two-year-old playing the drum for the first time would have showed just as much coordination and devotion. John shook his head in dismay. As if hammering at things ever helped a machine to work better… He had tried to hit somebody to make them understand a couple of crucial points, but that too hadn't really worked. And now... He shut the memory door before the past swallowed him down. 

"Do you know the Doctor?"

Rose's question brought him back to the discussion at hand.

"Do you mean me?" he asked, nonplussed.

"I don't mean  _a_  doctor, I mean  _the_  Doctor!"

"What difference does it make?" It was John's turned to be annoyed.

Rose sighed heavily. She wrapped her fingers around the antique key and squeezed it, eyes lost in the landscape of her past. Will felt a shiver creep up his spine. He had the unexplainable insight that the waitress' past wasn't just like everybody's; his guts were telling him, his empathy was claiming it, that her time, at least, was more like a big ball of wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.

He couldn't say where those words had come from. In normal circumstances, he certainly didn't think in such terms, but then, the circumstances were hardly average. Well, nothing in his life had ever been close to that; the scar on his stomach could attest to that.

" _The_ Doctor is someone… special," Rose explained in a small voice, an octave deeper than before. Even though there was not a single drop of whisky trailing down  _her_  wrists, Will could have sworn golden tendrils pulsed on her skin, or rather, beneath it. "Over time, he had been called the Great Exterminator, the Oncoming Storm, the Destroyer of Worlds, but what he really should be called is the Greatest Pacifist of all Universes, Known and Unknown."

John examined Rose's face with obvious circumspection. Will could tell he tried to see if she was drunk—which she wasn't—or drugged—which she also wasn't—or crazy—that, Will found harder to say, but he wouldn't be the one to throw the first stone. All he could affirm with certainty was that Rose seemed in awe of this Doctor, a feeling he remembered with acute clarity, for he had been spellbound himself.

Then Rose's words connected. The doubt gnawing at him over the last few minutes molded into amazement. When he spoke, it was with assurance.

"Do you mean to say that this… Doctor is not human?"

Rose released the key. The hand she ran in her wavy blond hair was a telltale sign of nervousness in Will's book.

"Would you believe me if I said yes?"

"Yes."

"No."

Will glared at John. The doctor raised his hands in surrender, but Rose was already standing up. Will pushed back his chair too.

"Can you... stay a moment? Please?" he added awkwardly when she shot a glance over her shoulder.

She was visibly unconvinced by her friend's attempts to make espresso. The clients lining up at the counter, however, were at worst amused at the current Barista's work. Jack had that way of smiling that made everybody believe he loved them. He might even think that himself. 

"If you don't know him, I don't see the point in-"

"We don't have to talk about the key."

Will couldn't quite contain the excitement in his voice.

"You feel... different. More," he blurted out. "I would like to know who you are."

John fought back an amused smile. He knew Will wasn't seducing this Rose, nor he would any flower, but his uneasiness in social settings could be misunderstood. That and his bold honesty, of course.

Rose surprised John, thought: she laid a hand on the table in front of Will, breaching some of the distance between them. Even though Jack was making a mess—like usual—and working his way out of the clients' very few complains by flirting with everybody, male, female, or somewhere in the middle—like usual—she was in no hurry to salvage the kitchen corner of  _Bad Wolf_. Whoever those two men were, she felt close to them, closer than ten seconds ago, as if they could, in a way, ease the loneliness eating at her shrunken heart.

"Where are you from, Will?"

"Wolf Trap. But I have the feeling that's not what you're asking."

" _Wolf_  Trap?"

"Well, yes," Will said, taken aback by her intense reaction. "Not that strange a name. Plus wolves are not that rare either."

"But they are not all the same."

"Indeed, for they are not all bad."

Rose held her breath as her mind tried to process their curious exchange. Part of her told her that this man didn't mean what she thought he meant; it was only a coincidence, a very suspicious succession of unintended innuendos. The other part, however… She leaned further over the table, until their faces were inches apart. The key at her neck brushed Will's chest.

"Where do  _you_  come from, Rose Tyler?"

Behind the counter, there was the suspicious noise of broken glass. Rose didn't look back at Jack, who wasn't looking in her direction either, all his wrath directed to the result of his precipitation, presently in many pieces on the floor. The client closest to the counter giggled in delight. 

"You wouldn't believe me."

"Try me."

And Rose did. She sat back at the table and told her story to the two strangers: how the Doctor had showed up one day at her job and told her to run, after blowing up the place; her first visit of the TARDIS, the spaceship out of time; the eternal conflict between the Darleks and the Time Lords; the confusing existence of alternate timelines, and the fact that time could but couldn't be rewritten; the fate of Gallifrey, the fate of many worlds that would have blinked out of existence if someone, an incredible someone, the last of his kind, hadn't stepped in to change the course…

"Time and Relative Dimension in Space? Time Lords?" John exclaimed, eyes widened in astonishment, as Rose finished her tale.

Will's empathic streak picked up the real heart of Rose's adventures—her heart, exactly.

"You love this Doctor," he said in the gentlest tone he could muster. "The Doctor," he corrected. "You love him. Where is he now?"

Rose squeezed her hands in front of her. In a daring move John would never have suspected from his closed-up friend, Will laid a hand on Rose's white-knuckled ones and opened up.

"I love someone, too. But he disappeared, after trying to kill me."

Before Rose could open her mouth, John added his hand to the pillar of trust.

"I love someone as well, and…" He cleared his throat. He would  _not_  cry again because of that madman! "He is dead. He killed himself."

Tears welled up in Rose's eyes.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered, agony written on her every feature. "I am so very, very sorry…"

Will and John found themselves searching her beautiful eyes full of darkness, charged with pain, fear, and regret.

"Where is your Doctor, now, Rose?"

In the background, a male voice was shouting something about awful, incompetent and espresso, but the three abandoned parties were to intent on each other's words to bother with physical surroundings.

"He is in a parallel universe." Rose struggled to talk between her tears. "And I am trapped here."

One disappeared, one dead, and one killing. They did have a lot in common indeed. 

 


	3. Appraisal, Arrogance, and Allegiance

**Note** : For the sake of simplicity, everybody except DW’s characters were born on the parallel universe Rose is trapped in now (Pete’s world), which means yes, Jack Harkness, albeit not born there, ended in that universe too. Now, Ten was in the original one up till now (hence Rose’s broken heart), but now ‘something’ happens and he is back in Pete’s world—where Rose is, along with John, Will and Steve.  
  
In the TARDIS was gathered the strangest crew the Doctor had ever had the pleasure to meet, and that was no small feat after roughly nine hundred years of travel in space and time, forwards and backwards, and upside down, too.

Well, pleasure. It was more an intellectual curiosity, really. After all, the three men standing near the console were not exactly the most loquacious guests of the universe, and for all he had learnt in the last hour, they were separately highly versed in the art of mind interpretation, mind manipulation and machine manipulation, but not gentle conversation.   
And they absolutely  _didn't_ get along, those three men. The Doctor rose from the chair he had tried to sit on for the last five seconds and began to pace back and forth in sync with the TARDIS lights, which were blinking in frenzy like an epileptic Christmas tree.

"Where are we heading?"

The man who had spoken was the one clad in what looked like a very expensive suit. He had slicked-back hair, high cheekbones, maroon dark eyes and the most unexpressive face the Doctor had ever seen on a human. The Doctor tried to decipher his features, impatient to see this glimmer of curiosity he so relished whenever he had people on board, but this man's face was like a Sphinx', and in more than one respect: there was mystery etched around those dark eyes, but also a cold and hard determination that reminded him of the Daleks with their obsession of destruction. If he had been mortal in the human sense, he would have feared a great deal for his life.

Except that the man in the suit didn't look like he wanted to destroy something, or kill someone—actually, there was a murder wish lurking in those maroon orbs, but it wasn't the predominant wish of this mind.

No. This man, whoever he was, wanted to  _claim_ someone. 

The Doctor swallowed hard. The sparkle in those eyes reminded him only too much of why he had left _Rose_ behind. Had he not exerted such self control, Rose... He would have tried to clai...

"I don't know yet," he answered finally as the man in the suit arched an inquisitive eyebrow. He did feel that something was amiss with the time flow, but he was still working on the minute details, his every move cataloged by the man with the goatee. "She won't let me drive." And before his three guests could throw him a bazillion questions, he quickly added: "She's a she, this ship we are in. The TARDIS. And she's bigger on the inside, as you have probably noticed..." 

"Fascinating. And who did you say you were?"

"What is the power source?"

The man with the goatee exchanged a glance with the tallest man on board. They were both wearing casual clothes, a pair of jeans and a shirt, and all their garments looked like they had seen better days. The man of the goatee had grease and dust all over his clothes, burnt marks on his hands, and the open expression of a child thrown into candyland. He kept turning left and right, fingers twiching, mumbling about 'artifical gravity', 'quantum teleportation' and 'Jarvis'. The last word the Doctor didn't understand, but it had to be the name of a ship. That man was no Gallifrean, though. A pity: of the three strangers, he was the only one staring at him with something akin to sane interest. The tall manhad clasped his hands behind his back and kept staring at him as if he was a fascinating insect to be pried open, much like the man of the murderous glance

The tall man left the console’s vicinity and strode towards him. The Doctor didn't flinch, but uneasiness crept up his spine. 

He still didn’t know why he was traveling with those men. Well, he knew he had invited them over to his TARDIS, or rather the other way around, but not why. His one-of-a-kind ship had guided him to the cities they were at a time somewhere, probably in the same time line—London, Firenze and Manhattan—and as it usually happened when she decided of their destination, he had found himself rapidly drawn to the people she had wanted him to meet. Drawn, this case, in the what-the-hell-are-you-doing-on-my-ship-while-I-try-to-forget-why-I-am-grieving fashin. 

“And you won’t tell me why?” he had whispered to the console, brushing a few switches with the back of his hand. The TARDIS had blinked an apology. A few hours ago, he had been tranquilly sitting in his library, trying to forget the pain of losing Rose in favor of an interesting scholarly book on Senterian’ psychology when suddenly, tons of books have been thrown in every direction, including the one in his hands. The Doctor had half-jumped, half-limped towards the door, as a deafening roar had shaken the TARDIS. He could only imagine the state of the pool. He hadn't set foot in the place for a while now; it reminded him too much of crying. 

“I’m coming!” Finally, a little bit of action! He hadn’t been able to concentrate on the book anyway, for a certain fantastic woman, who deserved far more than a crippled Time Lord unable to foster relationships that lasted past the necessity to blow a planet, had occupied his thoughts through the whole five minutes of reading. 

He missed Rose, he really did, but their forced separation had been for the best. Or that was what he tried to tell himself whenever he longed for his true companion.

He had almost reached the console room when his Time Lord senses had picked up on a very strange vibe he couldn’t quite identify.  

“Where are we traveling?” he wondered aloud, eyebrows creased in concentration. “Could it be that…”

"Sir?"

The Doctor was brought back to the relative present by the sharp tone of a man's voice. He blinked twice and stared at the tall man of the sharp cheekbones and sharper tongue, who was presently extending a hand and offering his name: Sherlock Holmes. The acid and icy personality under the Belstaff coat detered him only the slighest bit. The guy had a very strong grip, for someone so brittle looking. 

"I'm the Doctor,” he said for the second time that day.

"I didn't ask your title, but your  _name_ ," the British man retorted with the pained expression of an adult facing a difficult child.

If that Sherlock only knew how old he really was...

"My name's the Doctor," the Doctor said with a bright smile, sliding his thumbs under the suspenders of his pinstriped suit. "There is no other name."

"I'm also a doctor, but I have a name: Hannibal Lecter," the man in the expensive suit interrupted, visibly annoyed at being ignored. 

The interruption was surprising, and not only because this man didn't strike the Doctor as someone who interrupted, or tolerated such lack of manners; this doctor, this Hannibal, had just agreed with that guy, Sherlock, whom he had quite obviously ignored since his arrival. 

"Hi guys, I'm Tony Stark, aka Iron Man but you can just call me Tony," the man with the goatee called out from a spot near console room. He was busy running his hands over the surface. The Doctor half-expected his TARDIS to force the man back, for she didn't take kindkly irrespecteful fumbling of her walls, as she said. But the man, Tony, the Doctor noted with satisfaction, was touching the ship with the respect she deserved, moaning at her splendid curves, and lamenting the absence of Jarvis. 

Sherlock turned his irritated and irritating glare towards Tony, who craned his neck backward with a brilliant smile. There was something sad in that smile, so subtle the Doctor doubted any of the other two could have noticed. But then, Hannibal and Sherlock gave off that faraway vibe he experienced daily. They all dealt with a loss. 

"Yes, sappy boy? I am doing engineering. That is what I do, while I'm not saving the world."

"You're a lunatic," Sherlock replied, expression darkening at Tony's smug expression. "You might understand mechanical components, but the human mind is far beyond your reach."

Tony snorted and got back to getting aquainted. The Doctor stared, mouth open, as Hannibal and Sherlock circled towards each other in the way sharks tended to do whenever hungry. 

"You don't need to take off your frustration on our amiable host," Hannibal said sweetly, smiling with a hint of teeth. "Relationships are hard to maintain." The smile disappeared, but not the teeth. 

Sherlock balled his fist. "Don't psychoanalyse me. You won't like it when I'm..."

"I would ask you not to finish that thought, if you value your life."

"Is that a threat? You are no match for me."

Tony exchanged an alarmed glance with the Doctor. He was on his feet in the blink of an eye, racing towards the two adversaries, hands held in a pacifying fashion.

"Hey, pumpkins, what got your panties in a twist? Come now, don't..."

A fist flew forwards. Sherlock's. Tony ducked and hit back, strenght unrestrained. The Doctor lifted a hand to his nose, pinching the bridge of his nose. Emotions were running high. His own grief was intensifying, making him want to hand out a few punches himself. He had to calm down, he had to... 

The TARDIS groaned and fumed, sending them all flying towards the main door. Only the Doctor cried out, in shock, as he took hold of the closest lever. All three humans flew in different directions, hitting different parts of their bodies on the way back to gravity. 

"Hold on, everyone!"

The Doctor wasn't shocked that the ship was suddenly spinning around in the fabric of time and space—that was usual enough. Most days, it was due to irregularities in said fabric… and sometimes, it was the TARDIS' doing, because of a foul mood. 

Today was different. Today, right now, upon the becoming of another timeless second out of entropic reality, the Doctor finally comprehended why he had felt so weird over the last few... well, hours, days, tics of the still clock.

They were back in the parallel universe.

That was the Doctor’ his first thought. His second had blond hair and warm brown eyes, and that amazing smell that his heightened senses so hard missed...

"What is happening?"

The Doctor twisted his head to the side, casting a considering glance at Sherlock, who had managed to avoid having his head cracked open. Not one of his hair was out of place, and his eyes were shining with something akin to excitation.

"We finally have a destination," the Doctor replied, running a soothing hand down the tube in the middle of the console. He felt so incredibly giddy that he had to focus to keep the gears in his brain working. They all felt rusted. Rose. Rose…

"Real space, real time," Sherlock said, letting go of the lever he had used to steady himself. He was breathless. “We are not out of real spacetime anymore.”

His hair was pointing in every direction, reflecting the inner turmoil of his rapid reflections. He had been thrown quite violently against the door, and blood was trailing down his red cheek from a wound on his head, but he seemed oblivious to everything except the mystery presented by the present situation. That was a nice distraction from his usual torment, also spelled John Watson. Or simply John. He winced and turned his attention to logic, casting a furious glare at Tony. 

"I have inferred that we have appeared in your ship from different cities at roughly the same time," Sherlock continued, drawing three pairs of eyes to him, "so your ship is driving us to a person you happen to know, and you know this. It can only make sense that we—he looked at Hannibal and Tony with the first hint of curiosity—are to meet someone of importance too.

The Doctor could only nod in agreement. 

"We are here to meet someone I... deeply care about," the Doctor admitted, torn between pure joy and excruciating pain at the thought that he would have to leave again. It really was for Rose's own good. "But I don't know why you are along for the trip."

“Then we better not let this person waiting,” said Hannibal, clasping his hands, looking incredibly confident for someone who had been picked up in a futuristic spaceship. The Doctor supposed this man just couldn’t look out of place anywhere.

“Shall we get going, ship?”

The TARDIS roared in agreement. The Doctor smiled, somehow unsurprised that Tony had spoken directly to his ship. His guests really were incredible people.

And Rose….

The Doctor began to dance around the console, adjusting levers, pushing buttons and lifting switches. His guests appeared busy exploring the room, but he could tell they were watching his every move, and each other's—superior Time Lord physiology.

Bad, bad superiority. It was what had made him a lone wolf, after all.

“Rose…”

He missed her with all of his two hearts.


	4. Reunion, Rage, and Retaliation

Three Mondays later, Rose had traded her shift to partake in what her new friends had dubbed ‘The Club of the Damned’. She had donned black a black shirt and black jeans, matching Will and John’s grieving clothes. Even Jack, who mourned the Doctor in his own fashion, had put on dark garments for the evening. They had pushed two tables together in the corner farthest from the door. It wasn’t exactly cold at this time of the year, but they didn’t want to frighten away the costumers with a bunch of alcoholic drinks and strange venues of conversation.

And weren’t they special, the lot of them. Cute Will, with his hair always mussed like he had slept with a pile of puppies–which he actually did, whenever he could close his eyes long enough without seeing Hannibal. She would murder that man if he put a single toe in _Bad Wolf_. How could one claim to love someone and then stab them, kill their surrogate daughter and let them for the crows? She knew John felt the same, even if the medical doctor didn’t feel the need to express his disapproval in so many words, or so many glares. She wanted to hug him too. Abandoned by the love of his life, who had committed suicide… She didn’t feel as sorry for herself now that she had two friends to help face their grief.

Jack helped lighten the mood whenever he was there, be it at the counter, messing with orders, or hovering around their corner of the café, giving off massages. Even the newest member of their club, Steve Rogers, who claimed to be the captain of a whole country some seventy years ago, had let Jack untangle his tensed shoulders some time last week. That beautiful blond man–she could appreciate beauty, even if there will never be another one for her but the Doctor–had come down a path of pain and misery too.

The man he loved wasn’t dead, hadn’t tried to kill him or disappeared in a parallel universe. He was, put quite simply, too busy to notice the love-stricken man who had given up offering his feelings.

“Your Tony doesn’t know what he’s missing,” Rose had said once he had told them his story, holding his hands, compassion clear in her words.

She walked to the Club of the Damned and kissed everybody’s cheek before sitting down. Will was already halfway through his glass of vodka. Rose wished he would try coffee sometimes, but the man hadn’t drunken himself to a stupor yet, at least in their presence, so she considered him with indulgence and unwrapped her sandwich. She wasn’t really hungry after another nightmare–the four hundred twenty-third one, according to her diary–of the Doctor leaving her, but her body needed sustenance. She saw the approval in John’s expression and asked him about his day. An easy discussion started.

The goal of their club was to bind them closer, make them feel less alone by spending time with other mourners. They tried to broach normal topics of conversation, and Jack did his best to guide them back on tracks whenever they ensconced themselves in depreciation and depression, but lapses were unavoidable.

“I really did all I could.”

Steve gulped down his third glass of water. Apparently, his body processed alcohol too rapidly for him to enjoy it, and coffee reminded him too much of Tony. Jack was kneeling down beside him, making quite a good job of hugging the good Captain from behind. At some point, Rose had chided her friend for hitting on a widower, but Jack had pointed out that Tony was not dead–yet, he had added with a flame in his eyes–and none of them were fit to enter a new relationship, albeit they were missing on something for sure. So she let him cuddle Steve, who was now emptying his heart yet again.

“He just doesn’t see me, you know? I’m too old-fashioned, too… normal. He wants exotic.”

“Isn’t a man who comes from the dead seventy years in the future exotic enough for this douche?” Jack protested. “I, for my part, would…”

He stopped on Rose’s warning, gulping at the index finger she ran across her throat.

“Ahem.” He cleared his throat. “You know what I mean to say, right, Steve?”

Silence was his only answer. John face-palmed.  

“The men we know wish to change us,” Will suddenly said from behind his glass, eyes unfocused. “And if they can’t, they flee,” he added in what he hoped was a soothing tone.

Rose brushed away a tear. “At least mine didn’t try to kill me,” she said with a lopsided smile. “But we don’t decide hold the keys to our own heart; they do. And that gives them power us.”

John grunted in agreement, chasing away a vivid memory of Sherlock with his face in the sun, playing an exquisite piece on his violin. Will’s face darkened as the last touch Hannibal ever gifted him with surfaced, pulling him in the depressive recesses of mind. He still felt unsteady, but at least he was trying to pick a swim style among other castaway. He would learn how to wash ashore, eventually.

Steve held out the warm key which had been nestling between her breasts. Steve studied it with interest, willing to forsake every habit of his, Nick Fury or no Nick Fury, Avengers or no Avengers, if it meant he could put Tony Stark behind him. During half a second, he thought he saw a warm, golden glow, surround the gentle woman in their group. He dared to kiss her on her brow in gratitude. She giggled with mirth.

They managed to pull the conversation back to a more positive note. Two days ago, Steve had met John at his office und undergone a series of tests for the sake of professional curiosity. John had such a nice way of asking, quite unlike a few people at SHIELD. Rose and Will had met separately for a long hike in the woods over the weekend. On Sunday evening, Rose had brought him her home, to meet with her reunited parents. He hadn’t been exactly at ease, but they had two dogs at home now, so he had survived the introduction.

Steve, being Steve, had spent his time relocating. He still tried to help the Avengers in whatever way he could, but he wouldn’t accept to be contacted, couldn’t put up with the pain of seeing Tony ignoring him more and more everyday. It was a dreadful business, fleeing. Jack had offered a place in his apartment, and while Rose’s friend’s flirty personality was a reminded of Tony’s, he didn’t bring home any date and never made a pass at him.

“What would you do if you ever come face to face with him again?” Rose asked Will, pulling Steve from his thoughts.

Will licked his lower lip. His features hardened. “I wouldn’t let him fool me, not again,” he swore. “I refuse to be his instrument, ever again. What about you, little wolf?”

It was a nickname to which Rose wasn’t opposed. She couldn’t fathom how Will had come up with it, though. The man was a mystery, and a fine hiker at that, and a professional fisher.

“I don’t know,” she whispered, tugging at the key of the TARDIS. “I suppose _I_ would make a fool of myself and jump his bones, or at least try. Oi, what was that for?”

A customer had elbowed her quite violently in the ribs. Before he could express any form of apology, Steve, John, Will and Jack were up and ready. The man’s eyes went wide. He ran away in a record time. The fact that he looked like, in the group’s eyes, like Tony, Sherlock and Hannibal, which should have been impossible, didn’t help their tempers.

“Calm down, guys,” Rose said, patting everyone’s shoulders. “No harm done.”

“Not yet,” Will replied, brooding. “What about you, John?”

The doctor stared at his empty coffee cup. “Punching him would make me feel good. Having him alive, even far away, would take away part of the pain. Maybe in a few years, I will be able to visit his grave. Steve?”

“I don’t plan on ever seeing him again,” the blond man said, before exclaiming in the most fantastic succession of swear words he had ever trusted himself to utter: “Holy bloody fucking shit!”

Four men were making a beeline for their corner of the café. Four very, very easily recognizable men.   

     


End file.
